/lit/ - Literature

>>22875914
Thanks for the speech, but I'm not interested in writing romance, at least not yet. I have greater ideas. Now that you're done waxing philosophic exhortationalist, rec me a book with a loveable woman.

>>21364430
Hidden gems, you ask? There are too many to number! I've been considering dropping some of Kenneth Rexroth's ancient Chinese poetry translations here, to gently season our wee thread with a hint of Asian spice. There are many, and not all from the Orient on my mind. I will share a few I think no one here may have seen.

These excepts come from the collection, "Love and the Turning Year; One Hundred More Poems from the Chinese."

Majestic, from the most distant time,
The sun rises and sets.
Time passes and men cannot stop it.
The four seasons serve them,
But do not belong to them.
The years flow like water.
Everything passes away from before my eyes.

~ Emporer Wu of Han, Liu Ch'u (156-187 A.D.)

The fish weeps in the
dry riverbed. Too late he
Is sorry he flopped
Across the shallows. Now he
Wants to go back and
Warn all the other fishes.

~ Anonymous; (Six Dynasties)

"By T'ing Yang Waterfall"

A strange, beautiful girl
Bathes her white feet in the flowing water,
The white moon, in the midst of the clouds,
Is far away, beyond the reach of man.

~ Hsieh Ling Yuen; Duke of K'ang Lo (385-433 A.D.)

I wonder if this next one was perhaps an influence on Eliot's choice of words at the end of Prufrock.

"The Drowning of Conaing"

The shining waters rise and swell
And break across the shining strand,
And Conaing gazes at the land,
Swung high in his frail coracle.

Then she with the white hair of foam,
The blinding hair that Conaing grips,
Rises, to turn triumphant lips,
On all the gods that guard his home.

~ 8th century; translation by Frank O' Connor

This one is a bit simple, but in simplicity, a bit more accessible to beginners. It is more the poet I wish to highlight than the poem, though I love it as well. I'll type it in romaji, rather than kana.

Waga koi wa
chibiki no iwa o
nana bakari
kubi ni kakemu mo
kami no manimani

My longing is like
seven stones around my neck
stones it takes a thousand men to pull -
It shall be as the gods will.

~ Otomo Yakamochi (718-785); translation by Paula Doe

I also really wanted to post Ashbery's poem, "Some Trees," from the collection by the same name, published in 1956, I believe, but I think I'm out of space, haha.